Oddly Delightful!

14.12 – It’s So Easy, and other lies

At 17, I was a huge Guns and Roses fan; I guess I still am although much of my connection to the music has moved to the periphery.  The boys I ran with liked Guns but they loved Motley Crue, Metallica, Joe Satriani…  But there was something about GNR that made them my favorite.  In many ways it was the lyrics, somehow a young girl from Boulder, CO could relate to the anger and issues of five punks from LA.  But more than that it was the music.  That rhythm of the bass line.  It is still what I love about any song.  It is what makes me move.  It is what still gives me goosebumps when I hear a GNR song, not so much the angry lyrics anymore.

This is Duff’s story, he never uses it to gossip about or take anyone else down, and because he was the bass player in the band he had always been my favorite.  There are wonderful tidbits here that made me smile: Duff having business cards that said “Duff McKagan, Pastry Chef” prior to giving up the business to play music full time, Slash’s mom being all up in their business when they started out, Duff’s daughter finally picking up a guitar but only because she loved Taylor Swift.  Things that made me sad: The breakdown of the bands’ friendships, the loss of his friends, the loss of his mother.  Things that made me shake my head:  Basically things were good for GNR for a very short period of time, they lived essentially separate lives, and everyone sat by and let Axl’s personality kill it. Like I said, I was a big GNR fan but the only time I saw them live was during a co-headline tour with Metallica.  I went to the show a Guns fan, but after Axl showed up late and walked off the stage, I left a Metallica fan.

Quite honestly, this book was a delight for me to read.  To go back to that place and remember how I felt about the band and who I was then, to remember how I imagined their life to be and to see who they really were.  In fact, oddly, I feel like I had a lot of similar experiences to Duff and it makes me wonder if that is in fact why I was such a fan.

When it came to partying, drinking, and drugs, Duff had a sense to not go to far.  An invisible line of how much you could do while still knowing who you were. I was the same way when it came to partying. I didn’t ever want to lose control.  That doesn’t mean I never did, but it was some sort of self-control I believed I had.  Duff thought he had it all under control too, until his pancreas exploded.  It is nice to think we have it all figured out right?  Then to get all he wanted, have it not turn out to be exactly what he expected, and see it all fall apart. To feel totally alone and secluded as a result.  Then turn to literature and for that to become the way to realize that his shared experiences were normal. So like me.  Then to go back to school once you knew what it was you wanted to achieve and do really well in all of those traditional ways. So like me. 

You can tell Duff has prior experience writing because he moves back and fourth in time instead of writing a time line narrative. But you can also tell it is journalism writing; I feel like you could mix up all the chapters again and it would still work because they are self-contained. This isn't a bad thing.  It was in many ways not at all what I was expecting and yet at the same time exactly what it would have to be, the story of a normal guy trying to find his way.